Traveling Here and There

It has been a busy few weeks since my last post. Thanksgiving has come and gone, bringing family and friends together for food and movies. I highly recommend going to see the newest Wes Anderson film, Fantastic Mr. Fox. It was everything I had hope. The sets for this stop motion animated movie are amazing. The story by Roald Dahl was brought to life and expanded upon with Anderson's own recurring themes of parent and child relationships, being different, living outside the rules and consequences. I am looking forward to seeing it again, hopefully in the IMAX theater.

On the famed Black Friday, I was off to New York City to see the Tim Burton show at the MOMA. We had an entrance ticket for 10:30 am on Saturday. It was already sold out when we arrived and crowded upon entering. The show itself was interesting, but seemed to lacking something curatorially. It was laid out in a series of rooms that did not seem to flow from one to the other. The crowds forced us to jump around a bit. Although they tried to impose a chronological flow it felt out of balance. I wish they had done a better job at editing down all the drawings, which are interesting, but there was no added benefit to seeing the endless doodles. When the chronology finally arrived at his mature period of films, there seemed to be too little in the way of creative examples of what I consider to be his true genius, a complete vision that creates another world we can all identify as Tim Burton's world.

That said, I was glad I made the trip and thoroughly enjoyed seeing his work. If you make it into the MOMA soon, make sure you check out the rooms of design and architecture. I loved the show of items from their permanent collection of modern design. Take particular note of the corner filled with posters from Poland vintage 1945 to 1989. I found them visually striking and fascinating.

After taking in some of my favorite Matisse paintings along with an awesome Jean Dubuffet painting (when can we see a retrospective show of his seminal work?), we headed up Fifth Ave to the MET. Along the way we took in the Bergdorf Goodman holiday windows that are worth the trip to NYC right there! They were loosely following the theme of Alice in Wonderland. I want to know who the artist or artists created these amazing works? Each window was filled with such a complex maze of installation/sculpture/fashion it is mind boggling. I snapped away with my phone camera. The images do not do them justice. I could have stood in front of them all afternoon: mirrored instruments, fringe covered life size polar bears, cheshire cat, miniature buildings with M.C. Escheresq spiral staircases, horses of moss, shells, grass manes, etc..

Great Theater by Good Theater

The good theater company at St Lawrence Art Center has a run of Frost/Nixon through November 22nd. It was a full house last night, so get your tickets ahead. The performance was fantastic. Tony Reilly gave a beautifully controlled and steady Richard Nixon. Nixon has become such a caricature of himself that it would have been easy to go over the top with his portrayal. Reilly kept the energy that really sums up Nixon consistent throughout the show, which was quite a feat given there was no intermission.

One of the most telling lines was in the opening monolog given by the unidentified character, Jim Reston. He references Greek poet Aeschylus and the belief in 450 B.C. that man is struck down by the Gods when his hubris is too much. Reston says that we believe more now in man's self-destructive nature and give less credit to the God's. We see the pattern again and again in politics, economics and everyday dynamics. Does power corrupt or does a corrupt nature seek power?

Most of you know the story of Watergate and the fall out, which in today's current events seems almost benign. I found myself thinking about the actual history of that period and how would we compare George W. Bush's legacy to Nixon's? Have we learned anything from our own history? Is it inevitable that as humans we default to a neutral position of believing and trusting in our leaders and institutions without thinking and researching on our own? How many people formulate their own opinion on the ever increasingly complex world we live in?

I often argue that there will always be war, because there will always be humans who want to dominate and control others. We need the impartial structures that governments, at their best, can write and adhere to, in order to protect the freedom of all its citizens. Frost/Nixon brings my attention back to the failure of our own government to protect the rights of the given minority of homosexuals, lesbian, bisexuals, and transgendered in our country. We need the federal government to step in to uphold the separation of church and state, making all unions in the eyes of the law civil unions. Religious views have no place in our government if we are to protect the smallest minority from the tyranny of the majority.

I know I have digressed from the Frost/Nixon play, but when theater is at its best it communicates something powerfully and directly, opening my mind for the connections between everything.

Separating the art from the Artist

I find myself contemplating a question that seems to appear every so often, "Can we separate the artist from the art?" I watched a documentary this week on Picasso and Michael Jackson is playing on the Bose. I have plans to see the movie that is out in the theaters now of Jackson's last show he was about to embark on before his death. When Michael Jackson died suddenly I did not weep; I did not even feel that bad. My first reaction was astonishment that their could be so much adulation for a man who was if not guilty of pederasty, certainly took advantage of his position of power to take advantage of some children.

Michael Jackson had more fame than was good for him at a young age. This fact among others does not excuse behavior; it just explains it. We are a society driven by the fantasy of fame and fortune, yet those who achieve that goal often fail on the basic humanity issues. Both Jackson and Picasso were geniuses in their artistic vehicle.

I have been a huge fan of Picasso's work, while acknowledging the conflict between the creative force of such an artist and his treatment of the women in his life. Was he a misogamist? From everything I have read and seen I think he was at best a quintessential selfish egotistical artist. The bottom line is the work needs to be able to stand up on its own. Any historical facts about an artist's life add a different dimension to experiencing the work, bringing it into cultural and political context.

We cannot ignore the behavior of any person, regardless of their creative genius. It seems that we need to take it all in in life: good, bad, ugly and beautiful. On that note I hope to enjoy the music of Jackson that made me jump up and dance in childhood while staying clear on the score of the fully complicated human being he was. And for Picasso, he will always be at the top of my list of all time great visual artists. Who the others are will have to wait for another post.

Halloween and Music

Halloween was always one of my favorite holidays. I remember being a junior in high school and dressing up as Peter Pan to go out trick-or-treating. In college and before Cooper was born I would go to my brother's house in Groton in costume to hand out candy to the kids. When Cooper was old enough we would go with friends to Groton to go out. Now I get dressed up to go out with friends to dance and party at SPACE Gallery!

I lay in bed this morning, listening to a CD I downloaded last night, Thievery Corporation - Radio Retaliation. It came out in 2008, but I have only recently discovered it on Itunes. I must say the whole digital music revolution is awesome! I have always been into listening to music, but now I get to have immediate gratification along with the intense pleasures of quality sound through my Bose earbuds. For anyone out there who loves their ipod, but is unhappy with the quality of the sound, try the Bose. They are worth every penny of the price, which I think is around $95.

The other group I have recently been introduced to by my good friend Justin (musician and violin maker extraordinaire), is Tosca a duo of Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber. The sound is ambient electronica. It is mellow, but not to the point of acting like a sedative. I love this sound early in the morning, when easing into the day requires a little smoothing out.

Maine. The Magazine

I received my Maine Home and Design magazine along with the newest addition Maine. The Magazine, yesterday afternoon. After doing my usual flip through and look at all the images of both magazines, I was struck by just how aesthetically pleasing this newest publication is. They are using one of my favorite photographers, Karen Lewis. She brings a sense of theatrics without being over the top. The cover alone is worth the price of admission. Who knew Freeport could look so beautiful and exotic?

What comes through on maine. magazines is an amazing attention to detail. I love the tone of each issue. It seems to have a limited pallet that makes its layout and images more striking. It is also nice to see a wide variety of subjects and people represented. Congratulations to everyone who contributes its success!

On the Home and Design side of the duo, I am happy to see Richard Keen featured this month. Richard is a great artist who continues to explore Maine, the ocean, fishing, ship building and a variety of mediums to everyones enjoyment. I am lucky enough to own a Richard Keen painting that plays with abstracted sense of water, goldfish and pebbles. It is one of my favorite paintings!

Richard Keen's new work can be seen in a group show opening at Whitney Artworks on the first friday in November. The show called "Fresh Paint" includes two other artists of note: Deborah Randall and Richard Garrigus. I am looking forward to seeing this show and will definitely write a piece after the opening.

Art & Lies

Jeanette Winterson may be an acquired taste in literature. I had an acquaintance who was a writer, so I asked her one day who her favorite writers were. That is how I came to learn about Winterson. I jumped in the the magical world in Sexing The Cherry with an immediate love for her prose. I have great admiration for someone who can thoroughly transport me into another world to go on a journey of character development and pure adventure all within 200 pages. This in no easy feat.

After Sexing the Cherry, I moved onto The Passion, which continued the feeling of magic without being in a typical plot along the lines of either The Hobbit or King Arthur style magic. Winterson weaves art, literature, philosophy and history to enlighten us about the fact that the struggles we face today on such topical debates of equality for all are nothing new.

I was recently at Longfellow Books, my favorite local book store in Portland, and found Winterson's, Art & Lies. Although this book does not have the same tight plot as her others, it does have some beautifully written passages and the thoughts behind the different characters are relevant and important.

For example: "Read me. Read me now. Words in your mouth that will modify your gut. Words that will become you. Recite me until you know me off by heart. Lift up a flap of skin and the word sings. On the operating table the word sings. In the grave the words push up the earth. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, the living word." Art & Lies, pg. 144

I leave you know to return to Winterson's world where Picasso is a sane woman, Handel is a doctor and Sappho is searching a cross-dressing pub in London.

Swoon to Where the Wild Things Are . . . or An Afternoon About Trust

Swoon is the alias used by a dynamo of an artist who commanded a standing room only audience at SPACE Gallery on one of the fleeting beautiful autumnal days we have left before winter descends on Portland, Maine. Swoon took us through the short version of her life from Daytona Beach, Florida to New York City to global collaborative installations that test her sense of trust and faith in herself as an artist and a human being.

The first leg of her journey she credits to the empowering act of creating art as a child and being confirmed by others as talented, even “genius” material. That positive support gave her the drive to create furiously and ultimately drove her to take on the challenge of Pratt Institute, in NYC. The energy of one of our greatest cities gave her the environment that would bring out her true genius, collaborative creative vision.

How does someone go from painting renaissance style to building boats with hundreds of people to live on and take on not only the Mississippi and Hudson Rivers, but the canals of Venice, Italy? Swoon was dissatisfied by the stifling constraints of painting for museums. She wanted to bring her art and others together in the streets of her city and other cities. What started as small attacks on the abandoned buildings and advertising billboards of the urban landscape evolved into a complex collaboration she likes to call “democratic creation”. Her drawings grew into life size cut out paper portraits that were later born of woodblock techniques from linoleum on a human scale with an emotional intensity she carried forward from early interest in German Expressionism. I could feel the spirit of Kathe Kollwitz in the face of the Palestinian children and the woman from Cairo.

Swoon may be only 5’ 2” tall, but her dreams of how art can be more than something that divides us between the have and have not’s. In Swoon’s world we all have the potential to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We are part of the collective tribe of human beings. Her work gave me an exhilarating sense of hope. I know that word has had a lot of air play over the last year or so, but it does give me hope to see young artists challenging the status quo and bringing people together to give them the gift that they too can be part of something creative and positive.

We are animals at heart; who want to connect with others more than anything else. If a kid from Daytona Beach can sail seven boats down the Hudson River and bring life and art to the walls of apartheid in Palestine, then we can still dream the dreams of love and peace.

As Swoon was answering questions from the audience about her process: Was there a bathroom on the boat? Would she like to work more with kids in her projects? Swoon had talked about a billboard project that started with the kids out in a park drawing with her and others and the boys in Palestine, but she admitted that she is not ready to work too much with kids, since they still frighten her a little bit.

Fear is the flip side or dark side of all that hope and trust, which brings me to the seemingly unrelated artistic endeavor of Spike Jonze in his new movie of the classic Maurice Sendak book, “Where The Wild Things Are”. I went directly from Swoon’s talk and installation to Nickelodeon Cinema to see the movie. I was concerned that the movie might taint or diminish the high from Swoon’s talk and work at SPACE, but what happened was that the two experiences felt related and actually complemented each other.

“Where The Wild Things Are” is a dark and scary story about a young boy of 8 or 9 years old. He finds himself being left behind by his older sister and being ignored by a mother who is trying to do her best to keep her job and find her way in life after what I assume to be a divorce, however the back story is not really made clear. This ambiguity adds to the feeling of confusion for us the viewers, which makes us in a way equals and more empathetic with Max. Max is shown running around chasing the family dog in the first shot of the film. It is such an aggressive opening that we get it right off how much rage there is lurking in this young boy. We then see the pain and fear in Max after his sister’s friends literally crash his igloo before she drives off with them, leaving Max alone and crying. Max retaliates by trashing his sister’s room and destroying a piece of art he had made for her in the shape of a heart.

The tension culminates with Max raging at his mother while she tries to make dinner and entertain a boyfriend, ultimately biting her on the shoulder and running from the house out into the night. Max’s mother chases after him, calling his name, but is unable to find him.

Max’s journey in a boat he finds takes him to a place where there are no adults, only monsters who have eaten all the kings, who really stands for parents, who failed to keep them all happy. The movie does a great job at translating the rough and tumble world of boys at play, while pushing it to the brink of chaos. Ultimately the story is about Max’s inability to communicate his needs and feelings to his family.

What is the definition of family? Is it blood? Is it a level of commitment and trust between a group of people? Max learns about trusting in himself that fear when shared can bring people together rather than the expression of fear through violence that tears us apart.

The movie on one level feels more adult than kid-like, but that seems to really be the point; too many children are forced to handle adult situations before they should. How do you grow up to be healthy adults who can trust in others when a vocabulary is not created within a family to be able to communicate our feelings?

The show at SPACE and the movie reaffirm the fact that the more personal the expression of ourselves in art, the more universal the connection it has with others. Swoon was asked if she considers her work political; she does not. And I would venture to guess that both Spike Jonze and Maurice Sendak do not consider Where The Wild Things are as political, yet they can both be seen to relate to the politics of violence, war and peace. Both Swoon and Max learn to build the world they need by creating and working with others. It takes courage to trust others with our heart. Like muscle’s learning to draw, build, dance, sing or write, it is through practice we find our way to successful relationships based on trust and hope.